Any interest in orange convicts?

[Hybridfish7]

I make a decent amount of sales off my platinum convicts (not to be confused with platinum hrps), seen below:

You may have seen these fish on aquabid. Left is my original male, right is one of his daughters. Her fry are the ones for sale.
The white, blue, green, and pink on females is nice and all, as are the long red fins on the males, but what about the oranges?
Do you think I should start breeding my oranges specifically for their oranges, as opposed to letting my orange female do whatever with whatever males she happens to be with? I only have 3 pink fry from her, from when she (unintentionally on my part) spawned with a platinum male. I say orange as opposed to pink, because... they're born orange. I'm able to pick out oranges from the pinks as fry, because the pinks are pink, and the oranges are orange. I'll get a picture of them eventually, but at the moment, I can't find the only picture I have of an orange fry.
I have males and females just hitting sexual maturity from this female. Should I start breeding completely orange convicts? Now would also be a good time for me to figure out what parameters make more females in convicts.

Side note on this line, I notice they start out kinda tall bodied and fridge-shaped, but slim out as they age.

 

[Hybridfish7]

This is an older picture, the orange (as you can see in the first picture) covers everything except her head and some patches on her back now. Minor disclaimer to the orange bit, it is only in females, though the males can tan and get their baby colors back. I imagine the females can tan too in that case, I should try that this summer.

I'll be doing some water testing this weekend to figure out what it is that caused all the wacky sex ratios in my convicts, as my recent HRP batch had a rough 3:1 ratio of females to males, whereas my bagaces had a rough 3:1 ratio of males to females.

 

[FINWIN]

This is an older picture, the orange (as you can see in the first picture) covers everything except her head and some patches on her back now. Minor disclaimer to the orange bit, it is only in females, though the males can tan and get their baby colors back. I imagine the females can tan too in that case, I should try that this summer.
View attachment 1513585
I'll be doing some water testing this weekend to figure out what it is that caused all the wacky sex ratios in my convicts, as my recent HRP batch had a rough 3:1 ratio of females to males, whereas my bagaces had a rough 3:1 ratio of males to females.

Interesting you mention ratios...I have the opposite situation. HRP Hive Queen Pip has 90% male, 10% female out of 75. Her daughter Speck has 35 or so fry I still have, 50/50 pink and striped. Of the striped ones only 6 are female I can tell so far, 11 male. The pink ones seem to be mostly male as well just going by body size. No trailers on any yet. If I'm right the bias may be even more severe with the pink ones.

Maybe we can compare water chemistry? Or maybe it's genetic, I dunno.

 

[Hybridfish7]

Probably not genetic, I recommend testing your water and letting me know what you get in each tank. I've been looking into studies on sex determination in fish, sex ratios in apistos and kribs are based on pH, with lower pH favoring males, and some other African cichlid (I think) is based on oxygen concentration. My hrp tank does have more aeration than the bagaces tank...

The paper I read that had the krib/apisto thing said there were tests done on CA cichlids where they tested if it was a dominance thing, and someone found that amphilophus determine sex by size and dominance as fry, though they weren't able to replicate results with any other tests. They tried the same thing with convicts too, and got the same results, in the sense that it couldn't be replicated. Convicts use the whole sneaker male tactic, especially in colonies, so the whole "smaller less dominant individuals become females" or "convicts are hermaphrodites" thing is probably just confusion for that. But that's just a side note. Contrary to the results of those tests, the largest and fastest growing individual of every batch of convicts I've ever had has always been... female.

 

[FINWIN]

Probably not genetic, I recommend testing your water and letting me know what you get in each tank. I've been looking into studies on sex determination in fish, sex ratios in apistos and kribs are based on pH, with lower pH favoring males, and some other African cichlid (I think) is based on oxygen concentration. My hrp tank does have more aeration than the bagaces tank...

The paper I read that had the krib/apisto thing said there were tests done on CA cichlids where they tested if it was a dominance thing, and someone found that amphilophus determine sex by size and dominance as fry, though they weren't able to replicate results with any other tests. They tried the same thing with convicts too, and got the same results, in the sense that it couldn't be replicated. Convicts use the whole sneaker male tactic, especially in colonies, so the whole "smaller less dominant individuals become females" or "convicts are hermaphrodites" thing is probably just confusion for that. But that's just a side note. Contrary to the results of those tests, the largest and fastest growing individual of every batch of convicts I've ever had has always been... female.

Its funny...of the females I've determined there's a big one that might be dominant like her grandmother...she's as large as her male siblings at the juvie stage. All of mine have been raised in the same city water. I'll have to pull up the report. I usually keep temps 76-78 degrees. All of my tanks have oxygenation and surface agitation.

 

[phreeflow]

How can you tell they are convicts and not HRP?

 

[Hybridfish7]

How can you tell they are convicts and not HRP?

The platinums? Because the mother of every platinum I sell is a female normal convict from petsmart, who happened to be carrying the leucism gene

 

[FINWIN]

Ok, here's the DC water report for 2022. Hardness increases during the summer months. Chemistry experts feel free to chime in.

 

[eon aquatics]

They have a very pearly look as well.

 

[Hybridfish7]

They have a very pearly look as well.

The orange or the platinums